Magic

I believe that a bit of magic happened in the house tonight.  Lily and Emmy were in Lily's room arguing over something (sounds just magical, doesn't it?!).  I think it was a pretty typical situation: Lily didn't agree with the way Emmy was doing something so tried to tell Emmy what to do, Emmy probably wanted to do it her own way so protested and hit Lily, but somehow in the process, she hurt herself too.  Emmy came running out of Lily's room crying that Lily hurt her and Lily followed on Emmy's heels shouting at me in defense.

I said, "Stop.  Hold hands right now."

They stopped and looked at me just as dumbfounded as I felt at having come up with that.

"Hold hands right now." I repeated.

As Lily reached out her left hand and Emmy reached out her right to meet in the middle, I continued, "While you're holding hands, I want you to talk to each other about what happened."  They held hands and turned their bodies to look at each other.  As they started to talk, smiles spread across their faces.  They hardly made it through a sentence and started laughing.  I said, "Okay, now give each other a hug and say I love you."  They did just that, and then Lily turned to Andy and me and said, "Well, what about you guys?!"  Andy and I looked at each other, kissed, and said, "I love you."

"Are you all done saying what you needed to say to each other?" I asked as the girls ran off to the bathroom together to start a bath.  I heard "yes mom" tumble over the running water.  Andy was in the kitchen when I turned around, my eyes filled to the brim but not yet spilled over.

I told him that I'm pretty certain that I remember Janet telling me years ago that this is how her parents (lived their intense child-rearing years in the 1940's - 60's I would say, but both now passed away)and four children resolved conflicts.  For some reason, that memory just arrived in the middle of our evening, and I certainly welcome its stay.  Hopefully we can adopt it as our own.